On the Inherent Lunacy of California's S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Plan
This is Not What an Endemic Covid Plan Looks Like
You've probably read about California Governor Gavin Newsom's new S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Plan to tackle the "next phase" of the Covid-19 pandemic. While the exact details of the plan are still to be revealed, by the information we were given during it’s annoucement on Thursday what is clear is that it isn't a rational plan to course correct from the madness of the last two years, but a plan to double down on Covid lunacy.
This is not a plan for endemic Covid, it's a plan for a new normal where biomedical security becomes an ever present aspect of our day to day lives. Just ask Gavin, he states:
“This disease is not going away, it’s not the end of the quote, unquote, war.”
Gavin's plan is to keep the state in a permanent war footing with regards to Covid. Does that sound like normalcy to you?
As Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of the Great Barrington Declaration fame puts it:
"Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a forever war against covid, a virus against which we have no technology to stop disease spread. California is a biomedical security state until voters decide they have had enough (as much of the rest of the world is in the process of deciding)."
So what does our forever war entail?
The plan calls for ramping up Covid testing to 500,000 tests per day! What possible use will this have other than to maintain a salience to Covid which no other disease possesses in our society? For the virus to become endemic; as in domesticated and accepted as a part of daily life, requires not just community immunity, but also a cultural and political shift in how we all think about Covid. We eventually all must perceive others being potentially Covid positive with no more worry than if they may be positive for a flu or a cold. Ubiquitous testing prevents this transition from ever occurring, meaning the disruptions to life from potential Covid positivity, and the downstream reporting and cancellations which go with it, will continue unabated.
The plan may not mandate masks (for now), but it still recommends them as a “valuable tool” we should be using. Why? If the last two years have taught us anything about masks it's that they're basically useless at stopping the spread of Covid. How can you say in one breath that Covid is here to stay and in the next breath say that we should mask because of Covid? Newsom's plan is literally to cover your face with a useless mask for the rest of your life because of Covid!
The plan calls for constant surveillance tests via wastewater to "watch for the first sign of a surge" as if there's anything the state could do to stop the virus when these surges eventually come. The plan describes how actions will be taken within 30 days of a surge to identify new variants and determine if they evade vaccines and prior immunity similar to the experience with Omicron. These may sound like prudent measures, and to an extent they are, but the focus on variants is also very counterproductive. Every year new variants of flu sweep across the globe and no one bats an eye, and the same should be the case for Covid. Worse, it's the implied actions taken after the discovery of another variant which will fuel this never ending biomedical war.
The plan doesn't call for stockpiling 75 million masks just for fun. By testing 500,000 Californians a day you can be certain that cases will rise during the next respiratory virus season. The implication is that, be it this summer or next fall, when the next surge occurs the state will leap from it's planned war footing into full Covidian attack mode. Mask mandates and vaccine mandates will snap back into place at the first sign of a surge. Full Covidian lunacy may become a fact of life for Californians every fall and winter for the foreseeable future.
While I'm glad that Newsom can finally admit that Covid is not going away and that we have to learn to live with the virus, the fact remains that California still has more restrictions in place today than Florida had in September 2020! And California and Florida currently have identical age adjusted Covid attributed death rates!
And identical All Cause Excess Morality for the duration of the pandemic.
So what have these last two years bought us? and at what cost? As I wrote in December "The Battle for a New Normal has Just Begun" and Newsom's S.M.A.R.T.E.R. plan takes us further from it. We don't need a Forever War on Covid, we need to declare the war on Covid over, admit that the virus is endemic, and return to completely normal life now!
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